


be still my foolish heart (don't ruin this on me)

by sweetmusicplayinginthedark (orphan_account)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bearded Steve Rogers, Bisexual Bucky Barnes, Bisexual Steve Rogers, Engineer Bucky Barnes, Friends to Lovers, Long haired Bucky Barnes, Love Confessions, M/M, Mutual Masturbation, Mutual Pining, Porn with Feelings, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Roommates, Teacher Steve Rogers, and they were ROOMMATES, kind of, oh my god they were roommates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-04
Updated: 2019-03-04
Packaged: 2019-11-09 10:17:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17999945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/sweetmusicplayinginthedark
Summary: Steve loses a bet and grows a beard. Bucky loses his shit and grows some feelings.





	be still my foolish heart (don't ruin this on me)

**Author's Note:**

> heavily inspired by [this](https://me.me/i/yak-my-roommate-just-told-me-to-stop-growing-my-8de7a974a5ec46dfa895c61dbf97e271), my love for Steve Roger's beard and the new Hozier album, which you should all give a listen to because DAMN, it's so good. title taken from [this song ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Irw04nbXwxk).

Back when they were kids Steve had wanted to be a soldier. He had always stood up to bullies, even when they outnumbered him by so many that he’d end up with one broken bone or another. Kids were cruel and bullies were everywhere and Steve had always had too much fight in him, so the army had seemed like a good option. But his frail body and bad health had put an end to that dream even before they got out of high school. His growth spurt had only hit when he was in his twenties, just out of college and he already had to have decided what to do with his life by then. In school, his teachers had always called him a social justice warrior, back in the day when the word had no negative connotation and meant exactly what it said on the tin, and if he couldn’t be a fighter in the field, then he’d just fight the system from the inside, make sure the bullies weren’t given a chance to really grow into their meanness, make sure they would realize the wrongness of what they were doing, turn them into good people. Add his interest in art and history and his path was clear, he became a high school teacher.

The first years had been rough, with him being small and opinionated and not shying away from any fights in the teacher’s lounge, making some higher-ranking enemies in there and even better friends. Then he’d “grown into his big heart”, as his ma used to say, witnessing him grow in her last days, filling her eyes with joy even as she eventually succumbed to her sickness, and he’d finally earned “the respect he deserved”, as his friends put it. Almost ten years later he was one of the most liked and respected teachers at the New Yorker high school he was working at and there were very few students that dared so much as bully someone else when they knew he could get word of it. Nobody wanted to have a sit down with him and guidance counselor Wilson, having both men put them in their place.

His students liked his lessons, listened so well, they even started to question the sources Steve was generally providing them with, making him proud which was why it came as a complete surprise, when Michelle Jones, easily the brightest student in his entire school carrier so far, after a substitute lesson with Mr. Bruce Banner, his co-worker and friend who somehow had seven PhDs and taught physics, biology and chemistry, had declared that the Middle Ages were an invention a few weeks ago.

“Say what?” Steve had asked completely flabbergasted and his class had calmly looked back at him from their seats.

“I don’t understand why we learn about the Dark Ages when it is common knowledge that the Carolings never existed. Mr. Rogers, I expected better from you than to buy into those lies.”

He honestly had been so shocked that he hadn’t even made Peter Parker take the hallway pass as he excused himself from the room. He also had not noticed how red his face had been and that his best friend Ned Leeds was practically suffocating from his coughs. He had just stared, completely and utterly disbelieving, at his star student. He made it a golden rule to never curse in front of his students, which Bucky found fucking funny because at home Steve could curse up a storm when he so much as stubbed his toe, and made sure they put a penny in the swear jar that set atop his desk every time they did – except if it was in an essay and very justified, Jones had gotten away with it twice so far, once in U.S. history when she had written that “the founding fathers were a bunch of hypocritical assholes who declared “all men are created equal” but saw women as lesser than men and held black slaves they mostly did not even view as human”, the second time in World History, when she wrote that “the fucking Nazis were so much worse than the plague of the 14th century” – so, really, it had been proof of how dumbfounded he had been when the next words out of his mouth were a very quiet and very stunned “what. The fuck?”. He had put five dollars in the swear jar, which seemed to make the whole thing even funnier to Bucky when he told him later that evening, cursing and disbelieving and doomed.

Before he had left for the history teacher conference, which was why Bruce had to substitute for him in the first place, the two of them had struck a bet.

“You always say how smart you students are and I want to prove you wrong,” Bruce had said two days before the conference in the teacher’s lounge, their friend Thor – yes, poor guy really was named after that Norse god, his parents had apparently thought it was super funny considering their last name was “Odinson” –, the school’s football coach and funnily enough also their FCS teacher, already “ohhhhhhhhh”-ing in the background. “I bet, that I can make them believe in something that is fundamentally wrong and they will question you and your teaching skills in your next class.”

“What’s the wager, Banner?”

“If I win, you’ll have to grow a beard. If I lose, you’ll have proven me wrong.”

Honestly, the bet had been completely stupid and he should just have laughed and rolled his eyes, but Steve was petty and he had shaken on it without hesitating; thinking of Jones, Okonkwo, Parker and Leeds.

Which was why he had been so flabbergasted in the first place when Jones had challenged him. Shuri Okonkwo, equally as stone-faced, had crossed her arms in front of her chest, popped a gum bubble provocatively and raised an eyebrow.

“You always tell us not to be so gullible and now you refer about the Dark Ages? Mr. Rogers, we are so disappointed in you,” she had said.

The next “what the fuck” had stuck in his throat and he had merely held up one finger before rushing out of his room, going straight for Banner’s chemistry class. He had been perfectly polite when he had asked him for a word, but he was pretty sure every student that sat in classrooms in that hall heard him practically yelling at Banner “what a load of bullshit he was teaching his students and how could he fuck up three years of making them question all their sources and challenge their beliefs and what the fuck had he been thinking” and Banner’s following bout of laughter. Honestly, Bruce had laughed so hard he had been clutching his stomach with one arm, pushing his glasses into his hair to wipe at his eyes with the other.

“Can’t wait for the beard to come in,” he had said once he wasn’t helplessly gasping for breath anymore.

That had been seven weeks ago. When Bucky, his roommate, best friend since childhood and – unbeknownst to the man himself – the love of his fucking life, had heard about the bet and about what his students had said he had had the very same reaction as Dr. Banner did, only without the glasses, more tears of laughter and slaps to his own thighs and to Steve’s shoulders.

“You were never able to grow a beard, pal. This is going to be fucking hilarious!”

And it had been, really, the first few weeks had been ridiculous, his hair first coming in in some uneven patches that made his students giggle and Bucky reach for the spray bottle they used to water the plants in their apartment, spraying the patches while laughingly saying it was “to help his beard grow”, even going so far as to rub the water into the stubble. In an attempt to hide just how much he had wanted to close his eyes and lean into the touch Steve had just swatted his hand away good-naturedly, then smacking him upside the head when the brunet just wouldn’t stop laughing.

But then Bucky’s laughter had slowly started to fade, his looks had become less amused, a furrow appearing between his brows whenever he inspected the beard on his face and Steve was sure that he must have been looking absolutely terrible if his best friend wasn’t able to look him in the eye anymore.

~

The thing was, in all honesty, Bucky hadn’t noticed how Steve had grown from a sickly, frail boy into a tall, muscled man. Sure, he had noticed that all of a sudden, they were the same height and how Steve had needed to use his inhaler less and less and how he started going to the gym and basically became a fucking hunk, but he hadn’t _noticed_. Hadn’t _let_ himself notice Steve the way he noticed other men or how he noticed some actors, like Chris Pine in “Princess Diaries 2”, back when Bucky had been a sixteen-year-old, pimple faced teenager on his way on figuring out he was bisexual.

He hadn’t _noticed_ Steve until he started growing that _thing_ on his face and now, he had trouble not noticing everything else about his childhood best friend and fucking _roommate_. Like, how Steve’s body temperature had apparently risen significantly since they were kids and Steve tended to wear wool socks in summer because otherwise, he’d catch a cold that super easily turned into a bronchitis or some other life-threatening shit, because all of a sudden, he noticed how often Steve ran around shirtless in their shared apartment, in no more than a pair of sweats, presenting Bucky with a view of his flawless upper body. It made his mouth water and him wonder, how he had been able to _not_ notice how fucking hot he was.

He also couldn’t help but notice how long and artistic his fingers were, perfect for holding pencils, sketching the city’s skyline from their window or drafting new exercises for his next lesson, creating exams by hand. It made him wonder how his hands would feel on his skin, if they’d be soft, like artist’s hands, or rough from all the fighting he had done when they were kids and the boxing he did at the gym. More often than not his fingers were grading papers with a red pencil, tapping its end against his mouth time and time again as he kept on reading and grading, lips occasionally pouting or smirking.

Bucky had not really thought about Steve’s mouth before, but now he couldn’t stop thinking about it. About how fucking pink and kissable Steve’s lips were, now that they were accentuated by that stupid hair all around them. Bucky guessed they had always been that way and it oddly made him think of patching up yet another busted lip back when they were in college, sharing a room, and Steve had gotten into yet another stupid fight – even though he’d insist on it not being stupid because ‘ _he was touching that girl and she didn’t want him to but he didn’t stop and nobody was making him, so I just_ had _to_ ’ and Bucky silently agreed, even though he’d never admit it out loud, afraid that it would only encourage Steve to get into more fights and ending up with more than a few bruises, scraps, black eyes or busted lips. His lips had been soft back then and he couldn’t stop himself from thinking about how they would feel on his own, what noises would come from them as he took Steve apart with his lips and hands. In some wilder fantasies he’d even let himself imagine what he’d sound like if Bucky were to put his dick in him, what noises he’d make if he’d get to put his own dick inside of _Bucky_.

Those thoughts were dangerous though, absolutely forbidden. He had prohibited himself from thinking them for most of his life, starting in middle school, even though he had slipped every now and then, mostly in his dreams. Then there had been Peggy Carter, the English humanities teacher in Steve’s second year of teaching. It had hurt to see him fall in love so hard and fast, setting himself up for heartbreak because even though Peggy had loved him back just as fiercely, she had wanted to go back to England, not once wavering in her decision. Steve hadn’t wanted to go, had wanted to stay at the school, so after a year they had split, staying close friends nonetheless, but Bucky was sure there would always be a part of Steve that was in love with Peggy, wondering if in another life they would have married and had kids.

But it was as if this stupid beard had put everything into perspective for him, as if all the thoughts he had so carefully put a lid on were suddenly spilling out of their confines, flooding his brain with what-if-scenarios, searing images of Steve’s beard scratching over his chest, his thighs, in his mind, anchoring the deep longing he had always hidden in the back of his mind closer to the shore, like it was getting ready to break the surface anytime now, ruining everything they had built between them over the years. It was not a risk Bucky was willing to take and he’d keep his feelings buried deep as long as he could, even if his chest stared to hurt with how much he _wanted_.

When he came home from work that day, Tony’s scribbled notes of their latest experiment in his bag, ready to be entered into a proper table and be hopefully put to use to finish the formula they had been working on for the last couple of months, Steve was already sitting on the couch, brows furrowed, pencil flying across a student’s paper as he furiously scribbled about something in the margins. He was in full teacher mode and if that alone wasn’t already hot enough, he was stroking his beard whenever he wasn’t furiously scribbling.

“They still on about that phantom time thing?” Bucky asked, setting his bag down on the counter before opening the fridge in search of something to eat. When he came up empty-handed, he let out a dejected sigh and reached for his phone, searching for some easy recipe that wouldn’t take too long.

The thing about working with genius playboy and billionaire Tony Stark was, that some of his habits, like absolutely not eating when endorsed in work, were contagious. During some particularly time-consuming experiments Tony’s wife Pepper would come to the lab, drag them out and made sure they ate something, but on ordinary days they just- didn’t eat. It didn’t seem that important when they were close to a breakthrough but it wasn’t like Bucky could tell Steve about that, he’d fuss and get in his face, maybe even get into one of those rants that made his heart do flips because they mostly consisted of “you can’t do that to yourself, punk, there are people out there who need you, and I would lose my fucking mind if I lost you. I already lost my ma, I can’t lose you too”.

“Nah, it’s fucking worse now. They are seniors, we’ve dealt with the Middle Ages in sophomore year. Now some of them are trying to tell me that Hitler and Stalin were fucking.”

“Sounds like that Thompson boy just wants to be vulgar in his essay.”

Steve didn’t even look up from the papers.

“Flash definitely was one of the misinformed, but he’s not the only one. It’s like they are conspiring against me and I just want to not deal with their bullshit one day,” he grumbled and Bucky laughed, reaching for the frozen chicken only to find it gone.

“Where’s the chicken?”

“On the counter, it’s been defrosting since I got home, you should be able to use it for whatever now.”

Steve still didn’t look up from his paper work and Bucky was surprised at how well Steve knew him again, though after roughly thirty years he really should not be surprised anymore. But it did make him wonder if Steve knew what was really going on in his mind, what he was really thinking. If he looked at his face and saw how much Bucky wanted to curl up to him after a long day, how much he wanted to kiss him. He wondered how often his face and their year long friendship truly betrayed his thoughts, his feelings.

“You know,” Bucky said, putting together everything for some lemon pepper chicken, his back to Steve. “You were the one who wanted to be a teacher, you decided to spend your life trying to put some brain into those kids, make them functioning members of society. You could have just said “fuck that” and, I dunno, become an artist or something, you ware talented enough.”

“So the next generation is filled with bigots and assholes like ours? No, thank you,” Steve stated fiercely.  “I’d rather keep reading about Hitler and Stalin making out then knowing I could change something but not doing anything about it.”

“You do have some complexes, you know that, right?”

The pencil hit him right in the back of his head, perfectly aimed, but bouncing off harmlessly.

“Jerk.” There was a pause that Bucky spent with a widening smirk on his face, just waiting for Steve to give in. “… I actually need that pencil, can you-?”

Laughing Bucky bent down and threw it back over his shoulder into the general direction of where Steve’s voice had come from. By the sound of it, Bucky somehow managed to hit Steve right in the face.

~

“As long as he doesn’t look at me, everything is fine, but then, he looks at my face and just- I don’t know, he has never looked at me like that. It’s like he suddenly doesn’t recognize me. I just- I don’t know what to do, Peg.”

Even an ocean away Peggy was the one person next to Bucky he confided in the most. So, when he had figured out his true feelings about Bucky a few years after Peggy had gone back to England, she was the very first person he had told. She had laughed, softly, red-painted lips curling into the most stunning smile.

“I always knew you would figure it out eventually,” she had said. “You were always in love with Bucky.”

It had made him feel incredibly stupid and it also left him with a need to justify himself. Because just because he had figured out that the reason he wanted to be around Bucky, that he couldn’t imagine a life without him, was because he was in love with him, and even if he couldn’t pinpoint when exactly his feelings had started or if they perhaps had always been there, it hadn’t meant that he had loved Peggy any less for it and he told her as much. She had smiled, in that soft knowing way of hers and reassured him that she _knew_ , but that she also knew that these feelings hadn’t come overnight, they had always been there and they probably also factored in his decision not to go to England with her. He had felt terrible when he couldn’t deny the truth of that statement.

But Peggy had just said, “in another life” and Steve, as any time they reminisced, he had been able to see it right away. That ring on her finger would have been his and they would have been stupidly, ridiculously happy, probably already having some kids with blue eyes and brown hair – they would put on Peggy’s red lipstick, would be all fight and fury and righteousness packed in a body way to tiny for those humongous hearts in their chests, just like his ma had always told him he was before he had grown into it. It wasn’t difficult to imagine that life at all. But it wasn’t this life.

“Darling, maybe, instead of talking to me, you should be talking to him,” Peggy suggested, braiding her hair absentmindedly while listening for the soft noises her son Michael made in his sleep.

“But I could fuck everything up.”

He hated how defeated he sounded, how exhausted and sad. Peggy’s hands came to an abrupt stop.

“Steve. What’s the worst thing that could happen? There’s basically no time in your life when you weren’t friends. You don’t have to tell him how you feel, even though you should probably do that too, but you have to get this weird beard thing you two got going on out of the way. Whatever it is, I am _sure_ he is not disgusted by you or anything. Not when he has seen you at your worst, back when you were little. I’m sure it’s nothing.” Just then Michael started crying, loud and piercing. “Steve, I got to go, I’m so sorry, but I’m sure you’ll figure it out, you always do. Love you, talk to you soon!”

And just like that Peggy was gone again. Sometimes it sucked to live oceans apart, but it was still better to have her in his life through Skype calls than not at all.

Running a hand over his beard with a sigh, Steve but his laptop aside, got up from his bed and headed to the living room, where Bucky was watching “Star Trek”, shoveling spoonfuls of ice cream into his face. That usually meant something was bothering him and Steve was pretty sure this time he knew exactly what it was. He grabbed another spoon and let himself fall onto the couch, so close to Bucky that their thighs were touching.

“Sharing is caring,” he declared just as Nero sent the red matter into the volcano on screen.

Not looking away from the creation of the black hole, Bucky reached out the container to him, barely granting him the time to get a single spoonful. They finished both the movie and the ice cream in silence, all the while Steve tried to figure out how to say what he needed to say, but in the end, he just went with what his gut feeling.

“Look,” he said while the credits rolled, eyes fixed on the screen, afraid of the words getting caught in his throat, and Bucky did just that, turning slightly in his seat, one eyebrow raised in question. “I know you hate the beard and I’ll shave it off as soon as it’s up to Banner’s standards, but you have to stop looking at me like you think I’m appalling, alright?”

“You think- What?” Buck stammered, eyes big, some strands of his long hair falling forward as he jerked into an upright position. “Steve, you’re so wrong!”

And sure, he wanted to believe him right away, but-

“Don’t lie to me, Buck. I got eyes, I can see the way you look at me.”

“Well, you’ve read me all wrong then! I’m not appalled, Steve, I’m-”

His ma raised him right, Steve always let people finish their sentences, but this time, he couldn’t bear it. To hear whatever it was Bucky wanted to say, he just couldn’t.

“Disgusted? Horrified? Grossed out?” he said, sounding absolutely self-depreciating, just like he did when Peggy had asked him out, so sure that she was pulling a prank on him.

Only this time it felt worse.

“Turned on, Steve!” Bucky blurted and Steve snapped his head around so fast to look at the engineer that he could hear his neck crack. There was a rosy shimmer coloring Bucky’s cheeks, making him look even more appealing than he usually did. The brunet’s eyes were wide and he swallowed hard. Steve did too, quite incredulous of what he thought he just heard. “You look so fucking hot with that beard, it makes me want to do all kinds of unspeakable things to you.”

Usually Steve would say he was a pretty smart one. He really was not stupid, he actually was rather clever, but right now he felt pretty much like he was one of Stark’s robots, at the very beginning of its development,

trying and failing to follow even the simplest of instructions.

“I- You- What?” he stammered, eyes just as wide as Bucky’s, mouth hanging open.

“Don’t make me repeat myself, once was already embarrassing enough,” Bucky replied gruffly, getting up to retreat to his room, his face bright red.

“Wait. Bucky-” Steve said, grabbing his wrist, loose enough so the other man could break free if he really wanted to, but he didn’t. He stayed right where he was, as if waiting for something, his back to him, shoulders tense. Steve’s brain was working overtime, thousands of questions forming only to be discarded again the very same second. In the end he settled for the one thing he had the hardest time wrapping his mind around. Because if Bucky did think about him the same way Steve thought about _him_ then he wanted to have everything Bucky was willing to give him. And hopefully it would end up well, he usually didn’t really think things through – which was one of the reasons he had started some fights that, logically, he should have _known_ he couldn’t win. He took action but tended to rarely think about their consequences and this was just another one of those instances. “What-” His voice was husky, his throat tight, so he cleared it before he kept speaking. “What kind of unspeakable things?”

At that Bucky turned around, slowly, carefully, eyes roaming over his face. Steve returned his look calmly, even though he could feel his blood boiling in his veins, heard his heartbeat thrumming in his ears. Everything was quiet around them, the movie at its very end, the Netflix standby screen darkening the whole room. But there was that look again on Bucky’s face, the one that had been indecipherable only hours before. But now, with this new context, the dark eyes seemed like a sign of attraction and then a smirk spread over Bucky’s face, predatory, hungry, making Steve’s leg twitch with excitement, his dick beginning to harden. Steve hardly ever saw that expression on Bucky’s face and it was never addressed at him. But it was now and it did things to him that banned all rational thought from his mind.

“You really want to know?” Bucky asked, wrapping his own hand around the wrist Steve held him with, guiding it toward his hip, reaching for his other hand to put it on the other.

Swallowing the lump in his throat, Steve obeyed, hands on Bucky’s hips, pulling him even closer until he was standing right between his spread legs, hands on Steve’s upper arms.

“I want you to show me,” he replied, the hunger in his voice painfully obvious.

Bucky’s voice was just as husky, just as dark when he replied, one hand moving from his arm to his face, fingertips barely gracing his jawline, then _really_ stroking his face, his beard.

“Careful what you wish for, punk.”

“I’m pretty sure, I know exactly what I’m asking for.”

The other hand came up to his face, too, securing it in place so he couldn’t turn away.

“I’m pretty sure you have no idea,” he growled and Steve was thankful he was sitting, because he was sure his knees would have buckled otherwise, feeling hopelessly turned on, half-hard cock now standing fully to attention.

He was not really one to beg but it was exactly what he did next, helplessly looking up at his best friend, his every feeling right there, on his face.

“Show me, Buck, _please_.”

~

Stubborn Steve never begged, never admitted defeat, never gave in. But here he was now, looking up at Bucky with want and need so clear on his face that he was pretty sure Steve’s hands on his hips were the only things that were holding him up. But, if he really did what he wanted to do, then he would not be standing for much longer.

With Steve’s last words still echoing though his mind, Bucky tightened his hold on his face just a little bit, feeling the coarse hair of his beard scratching against the palms of his hands. One last look in Steve’s open face, then he closed his eyes, bent down and pressed his lips to his. He could feel the breath Steve had held warm on his face as it left him in a rush, could feel the softness of his mouth against his – just as he remembered – and then Steve was tightening the grip on his hips, pulling him closer, adjusting his head just so, lips parting until Bucky could taste the lemon bar ice cream they had shared on his tongue as they breathed each other’s air in. The angle still wasn’t perfect though, but this was something Bucky was familiar with, even if the thing with Steve was brand new territory, so he wasn’t shy about taking what he wanted, not when Steve had explicitly told him to show him. He broke away from Steve’s mouth at the first touch of their tongues, making the blond man whine beneath him, but he didn’t go far, just took a step back so he was able to straddle him, knees at his hips, weight firmly on his lap, pressing firmly down on his crotch, making Steve hum and wrap his arms around his back, one hand burying in his hair, quickly undoing the lazy bun he had put it in for work.

Bucky put his mouth back on Steve’s, this time going straight for hungry, open-mouthed kisses taking Steve’s bottom lip between his teeth and sucking it into his mouth, feeling his hips buck into his in return and his groan against his mouth. This was _everything_ he had imaged, the scratch of his beard against his stubbled chin, Steve’s fingers in his hair, on his back, pressing him against his chest.

When Bucky gave Steve a particularly biting kiss, he could feel the twitch between the taller man’s legs and it wasn’t like he hadn’t wanted him before but he had been fine with just making out but now, now he was able to actually _feel_ him hard for _him_ and it made him desperate, drove him just a little insane. It made him drop his head back, giving Steve access to his neck which he promptly used, rubbing his lips and beard all over it, making Bucky moan, his hands flying to Steve’s shoulder, roaming over his chest, settling at the hem of one of the too-tight-t-shirt he always wore at home. Steve’s hands were wandering again, halting low on his hips, thumbs toying with the hem of his shirt, lips resting at his right collar bone before he tilted his head back to look up at Bucky, blue eyes dark and wide and clouded with the same lust Bucky felt deep in his bones, had felt since before he knew what it was he was feeling, had felt even when he had tried to talk himself out of feeling it at all. But it had always been there, except now it wasn’t just him. Steve pressed one more kiss against his throat before leaning back a little, putting some unwanted space between them.

“So, when you said ‘all kinds of unspeakable things’, you meant making out like horny teenagers?” he teased, fingers still digging into his lower bag, thumbs slowly slipping under the hem, onto Bucky’s skin, making it break into goosebumps.

Bucky chuckled, dragging his hands back up Steve’s chest, rucking his shirt up a little in the process, baring the first few inches of muscled skin, making him yearn with the urge to run his mouth over it. Instead he put his hands Steve’s face again, fingers running through his beard before cupping his jaw, thumbs pressed against his jawline.

“Don’t think teenagers can grow that kind of facial hair,” he said, making the man under him laugh quietly. “You definitely couldn’t.”

Steve cocked his head to the side, leaning further into his touch, turning his head to press his lips against the palm of Bucky’s hand before turning back, looking up at him thoughtfully.

“You saying, you only like me for my facial hair?”

He had said it playfully, but by the look on his face Bucky could tell there were some serious self-doubts hidden behind that teasing smile of his and honestly, Steve could be so fucking dumb sometimes.

“Nah, I’ve been wanting to do this for a long ass time, Stevie,” he replied. “That thing just made me want to finally act on it.”

Bucky should not have said that, not when the way Steve’s eyes widened and his mouth fell open were any kind of indication to his true feelings. Now he’d be let down gently, Steve would tell him it would have been just a one-time thing anyways and that this had been a bad idea and that- Steve’s voice jerked him back to reality, the grip on his hips tightening.

“For how long?” When, instead of answering, Bucky just looked down, his hands falling onto Steve’s shoulders, the voice inside his head screaming at his own foolishness, Steve used his hands and his voice once more to bring him back to the here and now, big strong hands running up and down his sides soothingly. “Please, Buck, tell me.”

Since the cat was kind of out of the back anyway, how much more harm could it do, when he just- told him the whole truth? And Steve hadn’t pushed him off his lap yet, so maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing, especially when the grip on his hips made sure he stayed right where he was, though not forcefully so.

“Since we were kids, I think? Didn’t really… allow myself to think of you like that.”

Steve’s hands twitched again, making Bucky look up from the spot he had been fixing on the blond’s shirt and back at his face, watching Steve’s eyes roam all over it, taking in every tiny flicker of emotion.

“Why?”

Bucky laughed hoarsely, patting Steve’s cheek and fully intending on putting it back onto his shoulder but somehow leaving it right there instead, encouraged by the way Steve seemed to subconsciously lean into his touch.

“You’re my best friend, Steve. I couldn’t bear the thought of ruining our friendship. Or of getting rejected. And you had Peggy.”

There was a long moment of heavy silence, where Steve got lost in his own thoughts, probably thinking back to that year with Peggy and Bucky couldn’t resent him for it. He had never seen Steve as happy as he had been with Peggy, the two of them planning lessons together, dancing through the kitchen, Steve stumbling over both of their feet but none of them minding, both just laughing and loving and living in the moment. It made Bucky’s heart hurt, thinking about how close Steve had been to a happy ending, how broken he had been when Peggy had inevitably left – how lost she had been, too. He had been friends with her, too, after all. She had been amazing, perfect for Steve and even though he had wanted to, Bucky could never hate her, not when Steve had been so stupidly happy.

Bucky was so sure Steve was thinking about loving Peggy that his next word caught him completely off guard, making his brain short-circuit.

“I have… no idea when I started loving you. Probably always did. I realized it a few years ago.” He felt like his brain was malfunctioning because there was no fucking way he just heard what he thought Steve’d said, but apparently he wasn’t even done talking yet. “It’s not- it wasn’t some groundbreaking revelation or anything it just… Was. Right there, at the forefront of my mind. I just suddenly knew that I’m in love with you.”

There were words that wanted to leave his throat, an ‘I love you, too’ followed by a relieved laugh that somehow got stuck on their way out. Instead disbelief took over, making him stumble over his thoughts, his words.

“I- you- love me?” he stammered, even though he could see the truth on Steve’s face, knew his best friend was a terrible liar and would never lie about something this serious.

“Yeah,” Steve confirmed anyway and again Bucky’s brain supplied him with nothing but white noise.

“Oh. Oh, that’s-” he finally managed to croak out, not sure where he wanted to go with this but realizing it was the wrong thing to say because Steve’s hopeful expression kind of – crumbled, and he started to look crestfallen and heartbroken instead, eyes lowering. It snapped his brain back into action, his hands curling around his neck, thumbs resting on his cheeks, just forcefully enough to get Steve to look at him again. “Steve! You really are a dumb piece of shit if you think that I don’t love you back, you fucking punk.”

After a moment of stunned silence spent with Steve staring up at him wide eyed and Bucky grinning down at him like a lunatic, the grin also spread on Steve’s face and he chuckled, making his whole body shake with laughter beneath him.

“Damn,” he finally got out. “I always knew you were a romantic at heart, but this. Wow, this is the cherry on top, someone should put it on a gingerbread heart, along with all the other corny-”

With a snort Bucky leaned down and pressed his lips against Steve’s, effectively cutting him off. He kept it short and sweet, so he could break away and mutter a soft “just shut up” against his lips before letting his whole body rock forward, his lips capturing Steve’s once more, this time deepening the kiss and not letting up until Steve was helplessly whimpering into his mouth, his hands clutching at his shirt, pawing at his back, rucking his shirt up until his hands were splayed wide across Bucky’s bare back, moving up and down and occasionally, daringly, dipping lower, toying with the waistband of his sweats, yet never breaching them, not yet anyways.

His own hands had somehow found their way under Steve’s shirt, too, running over his chest, down to his abs and over them, feeling the muscles twitch beneath his touch, then they ran back up again, one hand going back to his face every now and then, fingers digging into his beard, pulling a little at the coarse hair, then going back to Steve’s upper body until the simple groping wasn’t enough anymore, the need to feel his bare skin on his own finally overwhelming and Bucky drew back, fingers already at the hem of his shirt.

“Can I-?” he croaked, voice rough and hoarse and Steve nodded frantically, raising his arms so Bucky could easily take off his shirt.

It fell into a heap on the floor the very moment Bucky let it go, gaze already fixed on the newly bared skin. The flush on Steve’s face might have been hidden by his beard, but there was nothing hiding the flush on his chest and, more importantly, there was nothing separating his mouth from it except for the few inches between them, so he leaned in; only to be promptly stopped by one of Steve’s hands on his chest, keeping him right where he was.

“You too,” he muttered, voice just as husky as his own and Bucky shivered, helping Steve’s impatient fingers strip him off his shirt too, pressing in again barely a second later, rubbing their now naked chests against each other as he melted into the next kiss.

By now their kisses were mostly tongues and teeth, lips mushed together as they hungrily made out on the couch, like they couldn’t get enough off of one another, like they had to make up for the time they had wasted, loving each other from afar. It was hurried and uncoordinated and Bucky thought every single second was fucking perfect, each weight shift creating delicious friction, that made Bucky see stars, feeling heady and far too close to the edge already.

At a particularly dragged out roll of his hips, Steve groaned, threw his head back, bared his throat, his cock twitching so hard Bucky could feel it against his own crotch, turning him on even more. Bucky leaned down, pressing open-mouthed kisses against his throat, sucking marks into the skin, finally, _finally_ getting Steve to slide his hands past the waistband of his sweats and onto his ass, holding him in place as he rutted up against him, making his head spin with lust.

There was a part of him – and not a small part at that – that desperately wanted to keep going, to seek out the friction until he went flying off that edge, but there was another part, a larger part, that wanted to do this properly, on a bed, with absolutely no clothes, preferably with the lights on, so he could admire every inch of Steve’s skin.

“Ste-Steve,” he muttered into the crook of his neck, voice breaking just a little. Steve hummed, never faltering in his rhythm, fingers digging deeper, one hand coming up to curl around his neck, then running down the length of his spine again, pushing the waistband of his sweats down. “We should-we should take this to the bed…”

“Later.”

His hand snuck to the front of his pants, lingering at the low waistline again, before, with a groan, Bucky gave in, pushing into Steve’s hand, feeling the heat of his palm through his sweats, pressing into it.

“Alright, alright,” he rasped, his own hand reaching down, immediately sneaking past the waistband and curling around Steve’s cock, feeling its hard length throb in his hand, the rumble in Steve’s chest vibrating against his own.

“Yeah?” Steve asked, freeing Bucky from the confines of his pants, their cocks brushing together, the both of them letting out matching moans at the contact.

“Yeah,” he replied, linking their fingers until they were wrapped around the both of them.

For a moment Bucky was transfixed by the view, but soon he went back to kissing Steve, working his hips into their linked hands, the wetness of his precum easing the slide, swallowing all the noises the blond made beneath him. He only broke away from his lips when he felt the first spurt of wetness hit his chest, Steve’s grip tightening and faltering, blunt nails of his other hand digging into his hip, cock twitching against his as he came. He looked so fucking gorgeous like this and it only took Bucky a few more seconds before he was spilling too, come leisurely drooling over their fingers as he pressed his sweaty forehead to Steve’s, his eyes closed, their gasping breaths the only sounds in the dark room.

“Fuck,” Steve murmured eventually, the thumb on Bucky’s neck drawing lazy patterns into his skin.

“I really hope that was a good kind of ‘fuck’,” Bucky muttered back, clean fingers toying with the beard again.

“That was a ‘we’re just getting started’ kind of ‘fuck’.”

He hummed, amused and reassured and let his mouth find Steve’s again for another kiss, slow and warm and oddly comfortable, like something they had been doing for a long time already and not just for the last forty-five minutes or so.

“Maybe we should take a shower first, though,” he said after the kiss, moving the fingers of their still linked hands, feeling the stickiness between them, slowly firming up and starting to feel itchy and uncomfortable.

“We absolutely should,” Steve agreed readily.

They spent at least another five minutes lazily making out on the couch before they finally found their way under the shower.

~

“You promised us brownies, Dr. Banner,” Shuri Okonkwo said, leaning back in her chair so far that it seemed like an impossibility for her to be _not_ falling over.

“And you’ll get them, just not in the chemistry lab,” Bruce told the whole class while simultaneously setting up the next experiment, not looking away from the knife and the teabag in his hands. “No eating in here, remember?”

“You’ve been stalling us for weeks,” Michelle Jones chimed in from her place next to Okonkwo. Bruce didn’t even need to look at her to know that she was sketching Parker, who was definitely concocting something in his desk that he probably should be stopping him from – but honestly, as long as nothing exploded, he did not really care, kid was too smart for this class anyway. “Do you want us to tell Mr. Rogers that you rigged the bet by letting us in on it? Because it feels a little like you do, not holding up your end of the bargain and all.”

“Just wait until physics, you guys, I’ll keep my promise.”

With steady hands he put the quarter tablespoon of potassium iodide into the prepared and emptied teabag.

“You better get Mr. Odinson to make the fudgy ones, too.”

“Deal’s a deal, that’s what you gonna get, kids.”

Slamming the chair back onto the ground again, Okonkwo squinted her eyes at him, making Bruce finally look at her.

“Better not make us wait then, doctor. We didn’t disappoint Mr. Rogers only to not get paid.”

Bruce nodded sagely, turning back to the still capped bottle with the hydrogen peroxide inside, the class finally settling down. That was, until after a long moment, Flash Thompson spoke up, probably rubbing his chin thoughtfully while doing so.

“You know, Dr. Banner, I think Illig might have actually been onto something,” he said, only to be shut down by the entire class throwing all kinds of sources and arguments that contradicted and rebutted the phantom time hypothesis at him.

Bruce was pretty sure he would have lost the bet. But the cheating had been worth it. It had been so totally worth it.

**Author's Note:**

> a few additional notes:  
> -not american, so not entirely sure how many subjects (if more than one) a teacher usually teaches, so I may have taken some liberties  
> -also, yes, Steve could have easily been just an art teacher, but I think history would also fit because while not making him fight in WW2 I gave him a particular interest in it (in an alternative version he read Jacques Lusseyran’s “And There Was Light”, in another he was the one who chose a movie and couldn't decide between "The Mummy" and "Hawksaw Ridge"), add his sense of justice and I think history would be the perfect opportunity to help students develop reflective thinking  
> -the [phantom time hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_time_hypothesis) is a real thing and, as a history student, I find it more than dumb, but whatever floats your boat  
> -the recipes mentioned here are real and delicious and if you want to try them, here's the one for the [lemon pepper chicken](https://www.delish.com/cooking/recipe-ideas/recipes/a55218/lemon-pepper-baked-chicken-breast-recipe/) and the one for the [ fudge brownies ](https://tasty.co/recipe/ultimate-brownies), they are TO DIE for  
> -I have no idea how on earth chemistry works, so yeah, I googled some shit and Bruce is preparing everything for the [ mystical cloud ](https://sciencing.com/fun-chemistry-experiments-high-schools-6169986.html), which is most definitely as advanced as I think it sounds just because there are some chemicals involved
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this ride, I certainly loved every minute of writing this fic, I hope you liked reading it just as much!


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